brain as night ended and I knew I would have to sleep, the
dread demands of uncompromising daylight: more calls to the
city, more calls to the landlord, more calls to the lawyers,
more calls to the super: and buy cat litter: and remember the
laundry, to take it in or to pick it up and I have left money,
five dollars: and I love you, have a good day, I hope it goes
well. I can’t sleep in his bed because in the day his room has
fumes, even with the windows open. So I am down in this
little closet under an open window to sleep. Somehow my
friend comes home at night, it is a surprise always, and I am
always, inevitably, without fail, a cold coiled spring ready to
snap and kill, a minefield of small, deadly explosions. Dinner
is eaten in front of partially opened windows. I cannot live
through this one more day, I say, each and every night, sometimes trying to smile and be pleasant, sometimes my face twisted in grief or rage. I am going to: kill the landlord. Today I almost
threw a rock through the windows of the hamburger place.
Today I almost went up to the man who runs it and spit at
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him, hit him, cursed him, called him foul names, threw myself
on him and tore his throat open. All day long, every minute of
every day, but especially today, whichever day it is, I want to
kill, burn down, tear down, destroy, put an end to this,
somehow, anyhow. He does the dishes. I stalk him. I want to
talk with you, I want an answer, what are we going to do,
where are we going to go, I want to move to a hotel, I want to
move, I want to leave this city, I am going to kill somebody, I
want the landlord to die, I want to slice out his heart, I want
to pound him into the ground myself, these hands, I am going
to call him now and tell him what a foul fuck he is, what a
pig, I am going to threaten him, his wife, his children, I am
going to make them as afraid as I am cold, I know we don’t
have any money but I have to go to a hotel I can’t stay here I
am going to burn down the restaurant I know how to make
bombs I am going to bomb it I am going to pour sand down
their chimney I am going to throw rocks I am going to burst
the windows I am going to explode it and break all the glass I
am going to set a fire I am going to smash my fists through the
windows. I almost did that tonight, he says, shaking, I almost
couldn’t stop myself, I almost broke all the windows. I am
quiet. He is gentle, I am the time bomb. I look at him. He is all
turned inward with pain, on the edge of a great violence which
we are united in finding unspeakable when it comes from him:
we are believers in his tenderness: it is our common faith. He
has a surface, calm and clear as a windless, warless night:
underneath perhaps he too is cold, or perhaps I am simply
driving him mad. He wants to throw rocks, not egged on by
me but when alone, coming home. He cannot bear violence, in
himself, near him. I have absorbed it endlessly, I can withstand
